A Note to Congratulate the U.S. Men's Soccer Team on a Spectacular Nations Cup Final Victory

This is really frustrating because I just wanted to post a note about how awesome it was that the U.S. Men's National Soccer team had won the Nations Cup victory against Mexico in extra time in Denver this Sunday but I hadn't put a title in the title line, so when I somehow accidentally hit the mouse button reaching for my coffee and it somehow happened to right over the x-out button on my screen, I was effed out of two pages of work.

Its frustrating because I'd essentially written the entire thing when I lost it, a funny little bit about how we had legitimately still been the team that Taylor Twellman so viscously spit-roasted in 2017 for losing to Trinidad and Tobago in World Cup qualifying. This is the audio clip that Scott Van Pelt delights in sampling on his nightly SportsCenter, a plaintive, shouted “WHAT ARE WE DOING?!?!” that is equal parts responsible self-awareness (Twellman explicitly includes himself as a contributor to U.S. soccer in the preceding rant) and an expression of helpless frustration from a fan.

The team struggled against Chile in 2019 and lost to Jamaica. While results have improved over the past year and a half, there have been no definitive results against yardstick teams until this, not against just any yardstick team, but against the nemeses, the great rival. Boss 1, the level we've still never really beaten, though we've gotten through by exploit once or twice.

And wouldn't you know it, its a new generation. Christian Pulisic, Weston McKinnie and Sebastian Lletget. Kellyn Acosta, Brendon Aaronson and Giovanni Reyna. And Ethan Horvath. Ethan Horvath, oh my heavens, Ethan Horvath.

This game was over after 70 seconds. The way we've been playing? And then to give up such a careless defensive turnover for a goal, against Mexico?!?! OVER, bruh.

And then another goal, called a good goal on the field? There's no way, there's just no way!

But we got the call, and a really mature goal off the set piece corner, first to win the header, which went off the post and then to stay composed and put in the rebound. Then we went down, again, another time when another team might have given up, let off the gas a little. But we got another good call in our favor to get the penalty shot and Pulisic filled his own shoes with a clinical take. The last VAR call was also, technically, a good call, although I absolutely hate that handball rule, particularly in current form. Still, by rule, it was a good call, so there was nothing for it but to stop the shot (there'd have been nothing but consolations anyways) and Horvath, Horvath, HORVATH!!!!

I still have no idea if he'll get the next start, he was the small kid on the seesaw in a battle for the starting spot before this performance, but yowch that was a great save!

And then to keep it together through twenty minutes of extra time, find a real, beautiful goal from play and then hold on to win it.

I had said it on the first draft, I has to be the greatest and the best performance the U.S. Men's National Team has ever put on, certainly outside of World Cup play, but I have to feel that it is bigger than any win we've actually accomplished in the Cup tournament. I did note that the women's Cup championships are clearly both bigger and greater than this, still. Because of the places of men's and women's soccer relative to the world, and for accuracy noted how the men's game still had more fertile ground for 'greatest' than women's.

Even this moment, which closes a dark interlude in the men's game and represents continuing advance in the overall sport, even as it proves our own local competition, Jamaica, Mexico and maybe even Trinidad have all been advancing in the global game as well, cannot compare to a World Cup championship, even with less attention on the women's game. But it is nevertheless enormous, an arrival of a sort established teams in the global sport will undoubtedly try to wish away, and which they will be rudely reminded of, the next time the stage is global and not just the region.

Cheers on a bright future for U.S. Soccer.